Page 7 of The Sound of Him

Of course they don’t.

It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.

But I can hear my mamá’s soft voice, her fingers in my messy curls, as she tells me goodnight. My name in her mouth had always sounded so beautiful. Prettier than all those prayers she recited and hymns she sang. Holier, somehow. She loved Jesus, my mamá, but she always whispered low that I was stillher favorite. Whenever my pa caught it, he’d pretend he was offended - not on Jesus’s behalf, but his own. It’d make me laugh and laugh, the way he’d grumble until my mamá kissed him on the cheek and promised he was a damn close second.

Itmatters.

I want to tell them my name.

I want to tell them so many things.

I want to tell themeverything.

But I can’t. They took that away - Mica and Jake and all the others. What I want, who I was, that name - they stole it all, ruined it all, locked it away and left me here with nothing. It matters, but it doesn’t get to matter, so I’ll have to work on letting it go.

“You back with me?” Nolan asks from far away. Except he'snotfar away. He's right here. I can feel him, warm and solid against me. He's not a ghost. He's real. “Matt?”

It’s as good a name as any, really. Close enough. Good enough.

I tap him, like the doctor said I could. Tap foryes. He hugs me tighter.

“Good. That’s good. He doesn't want to ask anything else, okay? He just wants to do the vitals he talked about. Then we can go. No more talking. Is that okay?”

I tap again, letting my eyes fall shut.

Nolan has to move me for some of it, my brain disconnected from my body. I feel dangerously unwound, like I'm apart from the moment, from the world. Just a ghost again. It was silly of me to have felt like anything else. I was just Pinocchio pretending to be a real boy. Pathetic. Useless.

The doctor asks if he can take my blood and I manage to nod, but when I look at the needle as it pierces my skin, there’s barely a whisper of sensation. It’s an idea of pain more than anything, like the needle is just an illusion.

Or likeI’mthe illusion.

I try not to panic. I know that I'm real. Iknowit. They can see me. They're talking to me. Even if I can't talk back, even if I'm not really a whole person anymore, even if I'm a ghost, I'm stillhere.

Only 45 seconds.

I'm real,I try to tell myself.I'm real, I'm real, I'm real.

How much longer before it starts to feel like it?

Chapter Two

Ace

My story - not my life, not the pathetic excuse of existence that’s forced upon everyone at birth, but mystory, the narrative I’m willing to embrace - started once upon a time with a starry-eyed teenager and his psychopathic older brother.

I try not to let myself think about the time before the two of them. I remember that there was a closet with a lock, a lady with a smile that felt like needles on my skin, and distant music that came and went regularly enough for me to use to keep time. I don’t allow any other details to trickle in. I don’t allow moments or memories. It’s just those three things - locked closet, cruel lady, music - and then, out of nowhere, a man crouched low in the opening of the closet, one knee braced on the floor, his flashlight pointed up at the ceiling to keep from blinding me.

The flashlight made him glow that night, warm and bright. I remember wondering if he was an angel, but I couldn’t get myself to ask. I was too afraid of the answer.

If he wasn’t an angel, then he was one of the bad men. He was so big, big enough to fill the whole opening of the closet with hisbody, and I knew what that’d mean for me. I knew how much it’d hurt. I was so tired of hurting.

If he was an angel, though, it meant that I was dead. I didn’t think I was ready to be dead yet. I wanted to see the sunshine, not just spilling through the crack between the curtains, but full and bright and real. I wanted to know what the noisy rain felt like on my skin. I wanted to know where the music came from.

The music was playing that night as I pressed myself into the furthest corner from him, as if a few spare inches would protect me. As if I’d ever even come close to escaping any of the hands that always came to grab and drag me out.

He hadn’t dragged, though. He hadn’t even reached for me. He’d just wiped one of his big, strong hands down his face, rubbed his palm against his mouth, and said, “Fucking hell. Someone grab me a blanket or something. Now.”